Illinois Family Institute also picks up the "gay pride as KKK march" argument: "The virulent hatred many homosexual activists have for Catholic (and Protestant) orthodoxy is fully comparable to the virulent hatred that members of the KKK had."

Cruciverbalists take note: "Crosswords can reflect the nature of intuition, hint at the way we retrieve words from our memory, and reveal a surprising connection between puzzle solving and our ability to recognise a human face."

Hugh Jackman wrapped up his Broadway show on Sunday. Called Hugh Jackman, Back on Broadway, the show's ten-week run brought in over $14,500,000, including $2,057,354 during its final week, a record for the Broadhurst Theater's parent company, Shubert Organization, owner of 16 other Broadway theaters.

Conservative blogger goes nuts about Tony Kushner's involvement in upcoming Abraham Lincoln biopic: "The problem is not that Kushner, the Pulitzer Prizing-winning author of Angels in America and co-writer of the movie Munich, is a left-wing gay radical. It’s that he is an angry left-wing gay radical."

Obviously I've only picked the famous names, so this is not a representative selection, but all of the above share one thing in common aside from being Nobel Prize winners: they were all married, and not to someone of the same sex ...

I've tried to go through the ranks of non-famous Nobel Prize winners, as well, the ones who won for discovering new elements or very small things, or for inventing Band-Aids. I found nothing, which leads me to conclude that either we don't know enough about the private lives of these sweater-wearing types or the Noble Foundation is a bunch of queer-bashers.

Laurence mentions two names that, you'd think, ought to appear on a list of Nobel laureates: the Englishmen John Maynard Keynes and Alan Turing. Turns out, there's good reasons these gayfolk never won. Keynes, who was at one time regarded as a brilliant conservative economist (and who has, for some reason, lately been written off as a socialist freedom-killer), did his work decades before the introduction of the Nobel Prize for Economics. Alan Turing, the freakish polymath who helped build advanced code-breaking computers for the Allies in WWII, and proceeded to do pioneering work on both artiicial intelligence as well as cellular biology, probably couldn't have won because his accomplishments were so diffuse. (Anyway, the Nobel committee prefers to award living people, and after being found guilty of sodomy by the English court, Turing committed suicide rather than submit to chemical castration.)

Laurence acknowledges that somewhere, deep in the bowels of Nobel history, one of the more obscure winners might've played for our team. And he's right, if you liberally interpret the word "obscure": Andre Gide, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947, was quite gay and quite famous. Still, there are a lot of Nobel laureates, and especially when considering literature, one doesn't seem like enough. Perhaps Capote flamed out early; maybe James Baldwin didn't write enough; and yeah, Ginsberg was really inconsistent. But Frederico Garcia Lorca? Jean Genet? Tennessee Williams? Marcel Proust?

All ignored. Oversight? Happenstance? I've got no idea, but I hope the situation changes soon. At HuffPo, Laurence writes:

I think that sounds right. IMHO, it's about time that Tony Kushner walked away with the prize. That guy's magic.

What other LGBT folk deserve it? Do we have a bunch of brilliant chemists, physicists, biologists, economists, epic poets, novelists or dramatists waiting in the wings? Who are they, and why aren't they famous?

Anti-gay vandal targets cars in northwest Washington D.C.: "A resident of the block said a homophobic epithet was scrawled on cars with a marking pen. It had apparently been done late Saturday or early Sunday, and at least six cars were involved, he said."

"AIDS-like" disease spreading in China? "Several Chinese media have recently reported that the Department of Health of Guangdong Province has confirmed that people in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangdong have fallen ill after being infected with an unknown virus. The patients think they have AIDS, but they test negative for HIV."

UK foreign office releases human rights report: "The report more extensively covers LGBT rights internationally than the previous year's, which was marked by a focus on Europe, but still shows major gaps. "

Scottish lesbian police officer wins discrimination case: "PC Tracey West was regularly taunted by Sergeant Michael Service who claimed gay officers were 'p**fs and freaks'. Sgt Service also made a jibe that her sexuality was an 'illness' and spoke about her civil partnership, asking who would 'wear the trousers' in the relationship."

"Porno Pete" LaBarbera's Truth Academy fails again: "There were 17 vehicles in the parking lot when I arrived on Friday as registration was set to open, and only a few more came in before we left at 3:00. On Saturday, I counted 25 vehicles before the Truth* Academy lunch break, so let’s fix the number of vehicles at 25 on both days. At least two of those were the vehicles of police officers.

Gay baiting by Molly Phelan against James Cappleman in Chicago City Council race? "Daniel Layman, a writer who lives in the ward, said he was contacted by a pollster who was engaged in push-polling, a political campaign technique in which an individual or organization attempts to influence or alter the view of respondents under the guise of conducting an impartial poll. 'Knowing that [ Cappleman's ] only crime agenda is to plant flowers and hang out on Halsted Street, would you vote for him or [ Phelan ],' the pollster asked Layman."

Is decking out the opponent's locker room at Iowa’s Kinnick Stadium entirely in pink a homophic act? The school's former coach who initially chose the color says: “Frankly, the only color paint we could find at the stadium was pink."

Security increased at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, TX for production of Terrence McNally's play Corpus Christi, about a gay Jesus Christ: "School police Chief Justin Williams says university officers will be assisted with security by police in Stephenville, a city of 17,000 located 70 miles southwest of Fort Worth.
Tarleton President F. Dominic Dottavio has said the play will be allowed because the school is committed to protecting and preserving freedom of thought, speech and expression."

Film for Polaroid cameras to get revival, thanks to enthusiasts: "The company, called The Impossible Project, will sell film for SX-70 cameras made in the '70s as well as more recent cameras that take 600-series film.
Each film pack will cost $21 and produce eight black-and-white images. The company plans to introduce color film this summer, and expects to make 1 million packs in the first year. The film will be sold online initially, but the company expects to make it available in some stores as well."

Details emerge of nightclub brawl that left drag queen Dixie Landers in a coma: "The jury will hear that a drunken Marcil had a verbal confrontation with Lefebvre on the gay bar’s patio after closing time, Tallim said.
Lefebvre’s girlfriend, Sheri Rand, intervened, Tallim said. She and Marcil got into a physical fight and ended up on the ground. When they were pulled apart, Rand was bleeding profusely from the mouth.
Lefebvre reacted by punching Marcil in the head, Tallim said. Marcil retreated inside and fell down some stairs."

Exodus International statement sidesteps responsibility for Uganda "kill the gays" bill: "On its blog — but not its web site — the ex-gay activist umbrella group Exodus International today released a statement which sidesteps the organization’s well-documented role in fomenting antigay genocide legislation in Uganda. The statement is signed by board members and numerous regional coordinators and 'ministry' leaders."

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner is inclined to give Obama the benefit of the doubt on gay rights because he has a lot on his plate.

"I'm very much inclined to be extremely patient right now...I feel that given what he's up against, the reality of what his administration has to address is so overwhelming and quite possibly, impossible...I have no problem whatsoever with extending a tremendous amount of good faith in his direction."